fatal fetal anomalies

At least 20 abortion cases are in the pipeline to the Supreme Court. Any one could gut Roe v. Wade.
Today’s emotional rhetoric has parallels to another politically volatile period in the early 1990s.

By Ariana Eunjung Cha
February 15, 2019

The Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 vote this month to block a restrictive Louisiana abortion law from taking effect provided some measure of consolation to reproductive rights advocates who feared the court’s new conservative majority would act immediately to restrict access to the procedure.

But that relief is likely to be short lived. In the pipeline are at least 20 lawsuits, in various stages of judicial review, that have the potential to be decided in ways that could significantly change the rights laid out in the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, and refined almost two decades later in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The 1992 decision said a state may place restrictions on abortion as long as it does not create an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to abortion.

The acrimonious debate over abortion that’s divided the country for generations is being reignited for the 2020 election with the Supreme Court’s tilt to the right and Democratic-led states moving to lift some restrictions on the procedure.

New York has eased some restrictions on late-term abortions, and lawmakers in Virginia have proposed to do so. That has given anti-abortion advocates fresh arguments and targets. Both sides in the debate, at the same time, expect the Supreme Court with two conservative justices appointed by President Donald Trump to narrow abortion rights.

In recent weeks, the anti-abortion movement has seized upon one of its favorite subjects with even more fervor than usual: abortion after 20 weeks. People purporting to be “pro-life” spent days deluging Virginia delegate Kathy Tran with death threats, wrongly accusing her of supporting infanticide after she introduced a bill that would make it slightly easier for women in the state to get later abortions. Trump seized upon this vicious momentum in his State of the Union address, expressing his disgust at the Virginia bill, as well as with “lawmakers in New York” who recently voted to legalize abortion after 24 weeks in cases where the fetus isn’t viable or the mother’s health is at risk. According to Trump, the latter group “cheered with delight upon the passage of legislation that would allow a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments before birth.”

This isn’t true, of course, but that doesn’t matter to those using it to incite outrage. The point is to demonize procedures after 20 weeks, depicting them as barbaric and tantamount to murder as a means of demonizing abortion in general.

When President Trump was elected, many women realized that something that seemed a far prospect could become reality — that Roe V. Wade could be overturned. In the face of this threat, we have also seen something inspiring. State legislators across the country — from Oregon to Illinois to New York — have passed a wave of progressive laws to protect access to abortion and safeguard a woman’s autonomy to make her own moral choices over deeply consequential, deeply complex decisions around when and whether to continue a pregnancy.

Recent legislation regulating abortion in New York and the fervor around a similar proposed bill in Virginia have ignited a national conversation around later abortion. We understand the president may include the issue in his State of the Union remarks and the debate is raging on cable news shows, in opinion pieces and social media posts. But this proxy war is not about the later abortions actually happening in the country.

It’s Both Difficult and Incredibly Important to Make the Case for Third-Trimester Abortions

By Christina Cauterucci
Feb 01, 2019

Conservative politicians and right-wing activists have targeted a Virginia state legislator this week and in the process reignited a nationwide debate about third-trimester abortions. Delegate Kathy Tran’s bill, which was tabled by a House of Delegates subcommittee this week, would have loosened some restrictions on second- and third-trimester abortions, which are legal in the state under specific circumstances. Though the legislation has been proposed in previous sessions—and though it never made it to the House floor for a vote this go-round—anti-abortion advocates are using it to paint pro-choice Democrats as supporters of, as Sen. Marco Rubio put it in a tweet, “legal infanticide.”

Eighth Amendment causing uncertainty for doctors – gynaecologist
Irish women can be trusted to make the right decisions about their treatment, says medic

Sun, Apr 29, 2018
Barry Roche

The Eighth Amendment should be repealed as it is causing uncertainty and difficulty for doctors and delaying the treatment of seriously ill women, a gynaecologist has said.

Speaking at the launch of Fine Gael’s Yes campaign in Cork, Prof Richard Greene said the amendment and the termination of pregnancy were difficult issues with both sides of the debate offering opposing views as to how it affects practitioners and patients.

Following a vote today, 17 January, in the Constitutional Commission of the Chilean Senate, the fantastic news is: the abortion bill was approved by the Commission by a vote of three in favour and 2 against. It can now be taken to the floor of the full Senate.

In a last-minute effort in the week before the vote, Chilean human rights NGO Corporación Miles launched four videos. The videos contain raw accounts by women of their experiences of pregnancies with severe and fatal fetal anomalies. They have been disseminated through social networks one at a time, each time to thousands of people – last Wednesday and Thursday 11-12 January, Sunday 15 January and Monday 16 January, with a clear appeal to the Senators to vote for the decriminalisation of abortion on three grounds.

In the first video, Natalia Ahumada, aged 35 from Valparaiso, describes how her daughter was found to have skeletal dysplasia and died in the womb at 33 weeks of pregnancy. She says: “In the public hospital, I was told that my daughter had genetic mutations. I was treated for anxiety and depression. You can’t forget that you are a woman with a non-viable pregnancy who is suffering. I was hospitalized alongside post-partum women with healthy newborns, who I had to share a room with until the delivery, knowing that my daughter was dead.” As if that were not enough, she says: “Because of the lack of information while I was in hospital, I had to wait another week to bury her.”

On the evening of 12 January, the testimony is from Rosita Fuica (23) from Los Angeles, who talks about her experience in a hospital that denounced her to the police for having suffered a miscarriage at home.

On 15 January, a video was circulated with the story of Andrea Quiroga (aged 40) in Santiago, who suffered a pregnancy with a fetus incompatible with life. And on 16 January, Paola Valenzuela (aged 42), talks about the drama of learning her pregnancy was affected by amniotic band syndrome when she was 36 weeks pregnant, and that the child in her womb was being mutilated as it developed because of a fatal problem with all its organs, which meant it would die.

“These are real stories, touching, daunting, about damage to the dignity of women in the extreme. We appreciate the courage of Natalia, Rosita, Andrea and Paola to publicise their testimonies to sensitise the parliamentarians. We hope that the bill will not only be voted on and approved by the Commission, but also in the Senate Chamber,” said the director of Miles, Claudia Dides, in a statement.